Guy Debord: we are being controlled via entertainment media - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15312982
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Guy Debord

WHO IS CONTROLLED: His conclusion is that the media-consumer is controlled by the images he sees. The media-consumer is pacified to the point of non-existence.

WHO CONTROLS WHOM: And this tool of control is being utilized, according to Guy Debord, by a combination of banks, mass media industury and organized crime.

This is who controls us using mass media entertainment.

Guy Debord is probably the most important philosopher of the 20th Century. He revealed so much that his publisher got whacked by.... the list of organizations above, perhaps.

His most famous essay - La société de la spectacle - translated into English in 1970 as The Society of the Spectacle(wiki article), was followed up a few decades later by the most more accessible Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (PDF in link).

But my favorite intro to Guy Debord's revealing pre-revolutionary work is probably this essay (by Morgan and Purje) that I found online: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/mirror/ ... ctacle.pdf

Some quotes from that Morgan-Purje essay:

Debord: In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life
presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was
directly lived has moved away into representation.


The Spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, medi-
ated by images.


The proliferation of images and desires alienates us, not only from ourselves, but from each
other. Debord references the phrase “lonely crowds,” a term coined by the American sociologist
David Riesman, to describe our atomization.

The Society of the Spectacle’s first chapter is entitled “Separation Perfected,” a quality that Debord describes as the “alpha and omega of the spectacle.”

Referring to the Marxist concept of false-consciousness, Debord describes how the spectacle
conceals the “relations among men and classes.” The spectacle functions as a pacifier for the
masses, a tool that reinforces the status quo and quells dissent. “The Spectacle presents itself as
something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than ‘that
which appears is good, that which is good appears,’” writes Debord. “It demands […] passive
acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its
monopoly of appearance.”


Image

Watching entertainment media, according to Debord, is a form of self-castration.
#15313095
In some ways, the Debord text is a bit like Martin Luther.

In both cases, there is this well-defined alternative reality (Mass media reality, Biblical reality), and this is being challenged by a "lone wolf" type of writer.

(Most writers are lone wolves, by the way. Writing is not a group activity if quality of content is desired)

For our age, Debord has challenged the fake media universe in which most of us fat, ignorant SUV-drivers live. He is saying that we have been made into fat, ignorant SUV-drivers by this very media. And that we are extremely easy to control - slaves with strings attached to their arms - because of the psychological power of images viewed by an entire society.TM

Image

Images carefully crafted according to psychological discoveries....

Images crafted to change human behaviors

Images sponsored by rich corporate entities and the Bankster Gang

Images that take away your very existence as a political human
(in the Hannah Arendt sense of the word political)

...

soundtrack
#15313359
QatzelOk wrote:Image
Guy Debord

WHO IS CONTROLLED: His conclusion is that the media-consumer is controlled by the images he sees. The media-consumer is pacified to the point of non-existence.

WHO CONTROLS WHOM: And this tool of control is being utilized, according to Guy Debord, by a combination of banks, mass media industury and organized crime.

This is who controls us using mass media entertainment.

Guy Debord is probably the most important philosopher of the 20th Century. He revealed so much that his publisher got whacked by.... the list of organizations above, perhaps.

His most famous essay - La société de la spectacle - translated into English in 1970 as The Society of the Spectacle(wiki article), was followed up a few decades later by the most more accessible Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (PDF in link).

But my favorite intro to Guy Debord's revealing pre-revolutionary work is probably this essay (by Morgan and Purje) that I found online: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/mirror/ ... ctacle.pdf

Some quotes from that Morgan-Purje essay:







Image

Watching entertainment media, according to Debord, is a form of self-castration.


I want the Colleseum and Circus Maximus back to entertain me.

Lupercalie and Saturnalia are also a must.
#15313578
JohnRawls wrote:I want the Colleseum and Circus Maximus back to entertain me.

Lupercalie and Saturnalia are also a must.


Imagine how delighted you will be when the Circus Maximus is brought into your home every night with commercial prompts inserted at the most emotional parts of the performance.

Now imagine a thousand years of perfecting behaviorism... mixed with a monopoly on entertainment media. Sound like MK-Ultra?

What kind of life would you and I have had if we hadn't been exposed to all this mental pollution?
#15313588
QatzelOk wrote:Imagine how delighted you will be when the Circus Maximus is brought into your home every night with commercial prompts inserted at the most emotional parts of the performance.

Now imagine a thousand years of perfecting behaviorism... mixed with a monopoly on entertainment media. Sound like MK-Ultra?

What kind of life would you and I have had if we hadn't been exposed to all this mental pollution?


I think everyone should try shutting off everything for a week or two and just meditating and being in nature. I did that for one weekend and your entire mind relaxes. It really is mental pollution. Watching war, and constant manipulations is tiring mentally and emotionally.
#15313618
Tainari88 wrote:I think everyone should try shutting off everything for a week or two and just meditating and being in nature....

Yes, try meditating ALONE in nature since people have fewer and fewer friends, close family, and social contacts than ever in homo sapien history.

Hannah Arendt made the claim that Totalitarianism is really about eradicating social capital in order to create blank-slate slaves.

According to Guy Debord, entertainment media was the best "regime" to get there quickly.

According to his work, entertainment media is "a regime" - a way of governing people by numbing them to their own existential pain.

Just like MK Ultra was about controlling people by numbing them.

Image
This little girl was "checked in" to MK Ultra for teenage angst and insomnia. After a short period, her mind had been erased to the point where she didn't recognize her own family, and reverted to an infant's IQ and level of speech.

This is the kind of research that our Scientific community do. And they have spent a lot of time researching the effects of entertainment and images as well. Have any of us really survived the entertainment media regime any better than this girl survived MK Ultra?
#15313628
QatzelOk wrote:Yes, try meditating ALONE in nature since people have fewer and fewer friends, close family, and social contacts than ever in homo sapien history.

Hannah Arendt made the claim that Totalitarianism is really about eradicating social capital in order to create blank-slate slaves.

According to Guy Debord, entertainment media was the best "regime" to get there quickly.

According to his work, entertainment media is "a regime" - a way of governing people by numbing them to their own existential pain.

Just like MK Ultra was about controlling people by numbing them.

Image
This little girl was "checked in" to MK Ultra for teenage angst and insomnia. After a short period, her mind had been erased to the point where she didn't recognize her own family, and reverted to an infant's IQ and level of speech.

This is the kind of research that our Scientific community do. And they have spent a lot of time researching the effects of entertainment and images as well. Have any of us really survived the entertainment media regime any better than this girl survived MK Ultra?


A lot of the creators of all the social media giants basically have admitted that they created something very destructive for human society. They even prohibited their own children from engaging with it. Yet, so many think that it is not harmful. It is harmful.

I am cultivating friendships here. I am. It takes a while though Q.

It is important to just turn everything off and be in nature.

I love the time I have to myself. Where I am with no one. Not with my son or my husband or the dogs or anything or anyone. It is so good to be alone with one's thoughts isn't it?

Sometimes I just stare at a plant or a leaf swaying in the wind and my only thought is how beautiful that is....no other thought enters my head.

I have a banana plant growing in my front yard, sometimes I touch the leaves and say to it, --are you going to give some beautiful fruit to eat someday? You are the best plant in all the world. Beautiful and radiant.

Plants respond to kind words as well too.

We lose a lot of what is valuable with just too many people talking to us and wanting us to do something and be something. Never enough time to just EXIST.
#15313705
QatzelOk wrote:Imagine how delighted you will be when the Circus Maximus is brought into your home every night with commercial prompts inserted at the most emotional parts of the performance.

Now imagine a thousand years of perfecting behaviorism... mixed with a monopoly on entertainment media. Sound like MK-Ultra?

What kind of life would you and I have had if we hadn't been exposed to all this mental pollution?


Would be boring without it though.

Also how is this a modern day problem instead of a humanity problem? Were Romans capitalists driven by mass media mafia or something?
#15313715
Rancid wrote:Yes, they were.

@QatzelOk nothing will get in between and my Calvins.


HELL YEAH, I WORSHIP THE FIRST TRULY GLOBAL MAFIA BOSS ELITE MEMBER. He also hated slav... communists like Spartacus hence he crucified them.

He was the first businessman to own 20+ billion but probably more in modern money and large chunk of property in Rome and across the empire. A true founder worthy of the modern times. Bought his way in to political influence easily.

ALL HAIL Marcus Licinius Crassus

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#15313716
Tainari88 wrote:Hmm, the question is do you pad your Calvins with socks or something to boost your manly image? That is the big question for you. :D


His precious Calvin underwear of course. Socks are important but Rancids junk must feel nice.
#15313717
About living in an age where everyone has been numbed by enertainment media, JohnRawls wrote:Would be boring without it though.


Yes, the other tragedy of universal brainwashing via mass media... is that normal human beings aren't entertaining anymore. They just sit there waiting to be entertained by the mafia who controls them via entertainment media.

Having lost our marbles and our independence through mass media brainwashing, we are rendered dull and socially incompetent. This represents a criminal level of damage to humanity at this scale.

Also how is this a modern day problem instead of a humanity problem? Were Romans capitalists driven by mass media mafia or something?

The Romans were dumbed down and manipulated by organized religion, which is the regime (control mechanism) that preceded electronic entertainment media.

We haven't been "a free people" in thousands of years, and our level of freedom (to be human) has been dropping ever since.

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#15314336
Rancid wrote:Bill boards are meant to tell you "Come and play come and play!"


The billboards that you pass in your car every day are a complement to the commercial radio you listen to in the same car every day.

Notice that on the radio, you have three minutes of music (Baby, love, mama!) followed by three minutes of ads that are voiced by people you might like to know... if you weren't always alone in your car.

Mama loves you and wants you to buy the products you hear the voices announce. And you're Mama's baby, so react like a baby with pure emotion please.

The billboards attack you as part of the environment that you "experience" at the same minute of your commute every day. "Enjoy Coca-Cola" is more of a command than a suggestion when you pass it every day at 8:33 am.
#15314779
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The Powers that Be want us to "send our love down a well."


I mentionned to Pants-of-dog (in this thread) that his rigor in attacking each Hasbara talking point, proposition by proposition, was an ineffective way of relating to a media device rather than actually having some kind of social influence on other people.

According to Guy Debord, expressing your political ideas on the Internet is like "sending your love down a well" and this is encouraged as "political" behavior because it doesn't threaten power structures at all. But it's not just Pants-of-dog who posts counterpoints that only wat0n reads (and then posts equally boring and insignificant talking points).

According to Guy Debord's logic, all the Palestinians will be killed, and Western media commenters will then... go back to posting new arguments on the Internet. No Palestinians will be saved by our Internet posts ever.

And this is why we are encouraged to "react" this way to genocide or any other atrocity that is committed by our elites and in our name. We react to each and every atrocity by returning to watching the screen.

The powers that be have us totally under their control thanks to this muting of our social reach and praxis.

Dead ducks staring at screens R US.
Last edited by QatzelOk on 08 May 2024 17:06, edited 1 time in total.
#15314782
wat0n wrote:Yet another stupid thread, about the inanities of some Marxist hack we're supposed to care about at a point in history where social media and the internet have caused a huge crisis in commercial media.

There has been no crisis in propaganda.

It just moved online and hired Hasbara trolls.
#15315008
wat0n wrote:...this inanity...


inane: empy of meaning or sense

That organized crime, together with banksters and the entertainment industry, have been pacifying schmoes ever since religions stopped having the same effect... is empty of meaning or sense to you ... means that you are not a serious poster who is capable of debating ideas.

Perhaps you have watched too much entertainment media to be able to reason or think for yourself.

Most of your posts look like recycled media memes, so this may be you primary problem. Try to follow along and perhaps you will learn something and become a decent debating partner.

OR... stop reading this thread and go back to Hollywood movies and Netflix. If it's so interesting, why do you bother coming here? To destroy our ability to debate?

If your purpose here is destructive, then Guy Debord would say you have the same intent as entertainment media.
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